Filmmaker Alex Garland explained why it makes sense for Civil War to come out during election year, why Texas and California are allies in the film, and the political polarization: “One thing history shows us is that no country is immune. Nobody is exceptional.”
At SXSW Film & TV panel after the film’s world premiere, the Ex Machina and Annihilation filmmaker broke silence on these topics.
The timing of Civil War has raised concerns, coming amid a contentious election year in which President Biden claims, “democracy is at stake” given his opponent Donald Trump’s history of attempts to subvert election laws.
“When I worked on Ex Machina, which was about AI, people use the word ‘prescient’ or ‘predictive’ [to describe the film] and I always feel slightly embarrassed when people say that because at the time I wrote it, there was already a huge debate happening about it,” Garland said when asked about the film’s timing.
“All of the topics in in Civil War have been part of huge public debate for years. These debates have been growing in volume and awareness, but none of that is secret or unknown to almost anybody.
I thought that everybody understands these terms and I just felt compelled to write about it. If you cast your mind back to when I wrote this in June four years ago, there was election coming and Covid–the same conversations as now. So that’s where it came from.”
The film isn’t meant to specifically be a criticism of the U.S.
“America’s divisions are echoed almost precisely in many countries around the world,” the British filmmaker said. “In America, there’s extra danger given its power and importance in the world. America has an internal concept in its exceptionalism that means it feels it’s immune to some kinds of problems. One of the things history shows us is that nobody is immune. Nobody is exceptional. And if we don’t apply rationality and decency and thoughtfulness to these problems, in any place, it can get out of control … I’m not trying to locate [these problems] to America, that would be factually wrong. I can take you back home [to Britain] and can show you the same stuff happening in my country. But the implications here are much greater.”
Garland pointed out that Civil War is trying to create a conversation about political divisiveness that vilifies the other side; ratcheting up rhetoric into ethical debate which makes it easier to see others as evil.
And once somebody is considered morally wrong, their opponents can justify all sorts of extreme measures to stop them.
“Why are we talking and not listening? We’ve lost trust in the media and politicians. And some in the media are wonderful and some politicians are wonderful—on both sides of the divide. I have a political position and I have good friends on the other side of that political divide.
I’m not trying to be cute: What’s so hard about that? Why are we shutting conversation down? Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. They are not right or wrong, or good and bad. Which do you think has greater efficacy? You try one, and if that doesn’t work out, you vote it out, and you try again different way. That’s a process.
But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’ We made it into a moral issue, and it’s fucking idiotic, and incredibly dangerous. I personally blame some of this on social media. There is interaction that exists human-to-human that floats away when it reaches a public forum.”
The story follows a journalist (Kirsten Dunst) and her colleagues as they make their way across hostile and divided states of America. Yet the film avoids typical red state/blue state divisions (Texas and California are allies).
The conflict’s politics are left almost entirely unexplained leaving the viewer with no more clues about what led up to the battle beyond what’s already been revealed in the trailers (though one of the president’s first actions was to disband the FBI, which seems like nod to Trump, who has called to “defund” the Bureau).
“I think questions are answered,” Garland said. “There is a fascist president who smashed the Constitution and attacked American citizens. And that is a very clear, answered statement. If you want to think about why Texas and California might be allied, and put aside their political differences, the answer would be implicit in that. Answers are there but you have to step to it and not expect to be spoon fed these things. It makes assumptions about the audience.
“The warnings about the country falling apart all out there, but for some reason they don’t get any traction,” he added. “[I wondered,] ‘Is it the polarization? Is it just that we are not able to absorb any information because of the position we’ve already taken?’ Hence, making a movie that pulls the polarization out of it.”
The film’s timing has been a source of debate. “The potential danger is that [right-wing] groups are not known for media literacy or nuance,” wrote one reader in an American Civil war subreddit before the film’s SXSW premiere. “And a psychotic gang of rednecks committing terrorism [in the film] to ‘own the libs’ might be obvious criticism to us, but might be interpreted as a role model to MAGA groups if not portrayed carefully.’”
While the idea of a modern-day civil war might seem far-fetched, a 2022 poll by YouGov and the Economist found that 40 percent of Americans believe a new civil war is “at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years.”
Civil War also stars Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Sonoya Mizuno.
The film will be released in theaters and IMAX on April 12.
